Heart's Desire eBook

“‘Now I lie here hurt to death,’
says the good knight Lancelot. ’This is
the end. Now, at the time when truth must come
from the soul, I say to you, my queen’—­she’s
always queen to him—­’I say to you,
I have loved you more than I have loved myself.
But if you could come, if you could stand at my bedside
before it is too late, before it is too late—­too
late—­’” Willie’s voice
broke into a wail. The ray of light was almost
fading from his clouded brain.

“Willie,” said Tom Osby, gently, “I
ain’t right sure I’ve got it all down
straight, but I think I have. You read her over,
and touch her up here and there where she needs it.
Curly, look here. I don’t believe Dan
Anderson would hesertate one minute to sign this if
he saw it.”

“They sign it with their hearts,” said
Willie, vaguely. “They always do.”

“He signs it with his heart,” said Tom
Osby, “and it goes!” He folded the paper
and handed it to Curly.

“Saddle up that Pinto horse, Curly, if you can,”
said he, “and make the run to Sky Top as fast
as God’ll let you. This letter’s
all right, and it goes!”

So presently there rode down the long sunlit street
of Heart’s Desire, mounted upon the mad horse
Pinto, this courier to the queen, bearing a message
from a mad brain and two simple hearts,—­a
courier bound upon a strange and kindly errand.

The blue mountains, beyond whose rim lived the sovereign,
looked gently down, and the stern walls of the canon
seemed to widen and make room for the messenger as
he swept on, carrying the greetings of an absent knight
to his distant queen.

“It’s like he said,” mused Curly
to himself, feeling in his pocket for tobacco as he
rode. “It’s that-a-way, and I reckon
it always has been. I’ve felt like that
myself sometimes. Ola, Pinto! Vamos!”

CHAPTER XXV

ROMANCE AT HEART’S DESIRE

The Pleasing Recountal of an Absent Knight, a Gentle
Lady, and an Ananias with Spurs

Long and weary miles lay before Curly, messenger to
the queen, but the bigness of his errand lightened
the way, and his own courage and hopefulness communicated
themselves to his steed. The mad horse, Pinto,
indomitable, unapproachable, loped along with head
down and ears back, surly at touch of rein or spur,
yet steady in his gait as an antelope. The two
swept down the long canon from Heart’s Desire,
traversed for twenty-five miles the alkali plain below,
and climbed then the Nogales and the Bonitos, over
paths known only to cattle thieves and those who pursued
them. At last they swung down into the beautiful
valley of the Bonito, and thence in the night far to
the southward, until at length they reached the defiles
of the Sacramentos. They pulled up after more
than a day and a night of travel, weary but not hopelessly
the worse for wear, at the end of the steep trail up
the mountains to the Sky Top hotel.